Not in the mood to pick personal fights but I saw one of my old sparring partners of the "all Dems need to do is pretend to love Jesus more" variety appeal to conservative Christians about potential food stamp cuts.
They don't care? I mean, of course plenty of self-identified Christians care and some self-identified conservative Christians care, but appealing to the consciences of "conservative Christians" will get you no further than appealing to the consciences of "conservatives," which is to say maybe somewhere but not very far. Conservative Christianity as a political movement (again not all conservative Christians or all pastors who identify as Christian conservatives) is opposed to the welfare state as it competes with private, and more importantly, good Christian charity. There's nothing magical about being a "Christian" that isn't completely modified by that modifier "conservative." I'm not interested in one true Christian arguments about what Jesus does and does not want as it's not my business. This is not a theological argument. Christian conservatives are part of the conservative movement, and while one can perhaps tease out some differences in emphasis between the subset and the whole, caring about food stamps isn't really one of them. They (notallthey). Don't. Care. Frankly, I find liberal Christians suggesting that "good" Christians should care about X because of their religion to be kind of offensive. Their deeply held religious beliefs are what they are. The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
